8 ms·

I think we're actually talking about different phenomena. It's not that booktok is driving sales for all books, it's that certain books sales are primarily driv

I think we're actually talking about different phenomena. It's not that booktok is driving sales for all books, it's that certain books sales are primarily driven by booktok and there's an attempt to figure out how to make that trigger consistently to drive traffic where publishers want it to go. Consider that Night And Its Moon is critically panned, but has a huge following on BookTok and was primarily got a book deal due to the initial pitch going viral on BookTok. Of course one of the things to note is that the books with disproportionate BookTok audience whose sales are driven this way are often written by pretty, white, well-off women.

ghaff 3y ago
Which is pretty much, while by no means a guarantee, the formula for get influencer traffic and followings in general on easy mode.
- atrus 3y ago
  Sorta. The issue is the traffic and followings from people who are there because you're pretty aren't the correct audience for what you're selling (assuming what you're selling isn't yourself so to speak). A million views from the wrong audience is less useful than 1000 views from your perfect audience.
deleted 3y ago
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falcolas 3y ago
Pretty aside (while not denigrating its value in videos), the book market has long been dominated (reading, writing, and publishing) by well-off white women. Not always dominated, mind you, but when they took it over, they grabbed ahold of it with both hands.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  By definition - isn't the market going to be dominated by successful participants? Do you mean independently wealthy people? Long ago, this was definitely true - as you only knew how to read & write if you were rich, and you were definitely only buying books if you were rich. Starting shortly after the printing press - yes, poor people weren't dominating the market. But it wasn't dominated by royalty (the vast majority of actual wealthy people of the time). I don't know where you'd consider Alexandre Dumas - but he's kind of the typical successful writer from his generation. His family was somewhat upper-class, but definitely not wealthy for most of his childhood. Charles Dickens was much less wealthy than Dumas. Mark Twain & Thoreau grew up definitely not in the upper class. Same for Nathaniel Hawthorne. Dostoyevsky was not from wealth Mary Shelley was wealthy. Jane Austen & Emily Dickinson were upper class - but not wealthy. But neither were highly successful during their lifetimes. The Bronte sisters were somewhat well off - less so than Austen and Dickinson - but not from a long-line of wealth, and even they weren't very successful in their lifetime! Tolstoy AFAIK was the only super successful independently wealthy writer from the time. Poe, Melville, Henry James, and Victor Hugo were definitely well off, but "wealthy" seems like a stretch. If you look at today - it is definitely not true. JK Rowling is by far the most successful author of the generation, and she was arguably poor before finding success with Harry Potter. Suzanne Collins worked her way up from the bottom and had very middle class life before success with The Hunger Games. Maybe you mean the majority of authors have not-poor spouses? They better! The median author probably makes less than $100 in their career as a writer.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    > By definition - isn't the market going to be dominated by successful participants? They said well-off, and when it comes to book sales being part of the successful masses is a few steps short of making you well-off. > writers Almost all of these are from the 1800s? That doesn't contradict the idea that a group "not always" dominated but has "long" dominated. You only named two authors that are clearly recent enough to be relevant to the argument.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      The early 1900s is a continuation - with men dominating, and the women being mostly upper class but not wealthy. Wharton is rich (the phrase keeping up with the Joneses comes from her family), Woolf and Gertrude Stein are well-off and McCullers & Plath a bit less so. Harper Lee's father was a lawyer, and she's a one-hit wonder. Toni Morrison was not rich... The vast majority of men - who dominate (not the women) - are not from well-off families: Steinbeck, Orwell, Sinclair, Tolkein, Fitzgerald, Lewis Carroll, Tennessee Williams, D.H Lawrence, Jack London (who claimed to be poor but wasn't), Kerouac, Vonnegut. Stephen King and Stan Lee were arguably poor. Hemingway, Salinger, Conrad, Roald Dahl, and Joseph Heller are not from wealth, but definitely not poor. Frank L Baum was wealthy, similar to Melville & Hugo - Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and Jane Austen - but less so than Tolstoy.
- Brybry 3y ago
  This is only very recently true (and disregarding the "well off" part). Women probably authored over 50% of books starting sometime in the 2010s. [1] And dominate might still be too strong of a word to use, though it's likely true for some genres (ie. ~80% of books and sales in romance). Going by the graphs on page 28 figure 2: Today, women are probably authors of around ~45% to ~60% of new books in the dataset (Goodreads/Bookstat(amazon)/US copyright) and still climbing . [1] https://doi.org/10.3386/w30987 https://doi.org/10.3386/w30987
- Mat3777 3y ago
  Do you have data on white women dominance?
- paulcole 3y ago
  When did they take it over?
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    90's? 1996 I think.
    - paulcole 3y ago
      What happened in 1996 that changed the game? Wasn’t that the Primary Colors year?
LightBug1 3y ago
Don't forget an athleisured ass to drive attention and an appropriate coefficient of sales.
bawolff 3y ago
> disproportionate BookTok audience whose sales are driven this way are often written by pretty, white, well-off women. Don't you have to be fairly well off to invest the time to write a book? Its a pretty big time investment with basically no garuntees. I imagine its pretty rare for poor people who work all day to be successful writers. Not to mention a probably strong correlation in higher education in an area that is not all that useful for getting a job,probably further tips the scale to well off people. Basically what i'm wondering, is it really disporportionate relative to the industry at large.
- Finnucane 3y ago
  >Don't you have to be fairly well off to invest the time to write a book? I can say, after 30 years in the publishing business, that the answer to that is no. Many writers are not that well off. In fact, many struggle financially. Many have 'day jobs' to pay the bills.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    It's true that many struggle, and as a result most writers are not full time. But first published novels skew quite old, and as I posted elsewhere the average household income in the UK at least for full time writers is well above average, so while I don't think it's high enough to say you have to be "fairly well off", it certainly helps buy you time. Doesn't necessarily buy you success, though.
    - Finnucane 3y ago
      >But first published novels skew quite old Most of the writers I know started young, and not all writers are novelists. Most are not. >and as I posted elsewhere the average household income in the UK at least for full time writers is well above average That just means they married someone with a real job.
      - vidarh 3y ago
        Most you know might well have started young - many do -, but in terms of getting books published, as per the subject here, the overall numbers are quite clear. > That just means they married someone with a real job. Yes, that was exactly the point - to a large extent writing is subsidized by other jobs, and so there is a significant element of privilege involved.
imperio59 3y ago
I don't get the last point. What does being white or well off have to do with the ability to write books people wanna read? Or is this just casual racism disguised as an attempt to virtue signal?
- bowsamic 3y ago
  It’s not even virtue signalling, he’s just straight up saying “the crap is produced by white people”
- komali2 3y ago
  > What does being white or well off have to do with the ability to write books people wanna read? For actual ability, nothing, though the knock-on affects of being white and thus having a higher chance of greater economic standing from birth onwards, higher chance of good education opportunities, greater likelihood of good nutrition, and all the other aspects of existent systemic racism means that ability to have time to write is greater for white people (in the USA). Pointing out the reality of systemic racism is not racism. Institutionalized white supremacy is very real in the USA and is so inherent it can have weird effects like how children prefer to play with white dolls: https://www.history.com/news/brown-v-board-of-education-doll-experiment https://www.history.com/news/brown-v-board-of-education-doll... (it turns out this still happens today). So it follows that white women, for the same reason, might have an advantage on social media accessed by people living in a white supremacist system, or a system that still holds echos of white supremacy.
- somethingreen 3y ago
  The argument, I think, is that these book sales are in big (-er than historically) part driven not by their quality, but by either physical attraction to the author or admiration for their perceived success.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Don't think it is virtue signaling, it is just observation on demographics. There are more well off white people, and more well off white women with spare time, and they get 'status' by being published authors, even thought writers don't make much money. Others in the thread have posted some links to statistics. But, this is not to say that there are not exceptions. There are some white women that have written good books, and there are non-white women that publish good books. It was just observation on a general trend. There is a group with free time to pursue 'something' that doesn't make a lot of money because of the status they get from that 'something'. Hence they have a lot of influence in that market.
ChrisRR 3y ago
This seems to happen in many communities. There's a community of people using chinese emulation consoles, and some of them are decent but a lot of them are absolute crap But there's a constant influx of "My <crap console> has broken, what do I do?" It's always the same consoles, always the same faults, but led by some tiktok advert that convinces them to buy the same aliexpress tat without any research of why they shouldn't and what modifications they have to make to make it playable

ghaff 3y ago

Which is pretty much, while by no means a guarantee, the formula for get influencer traffic and followings in general on easy mode.

atrus 3y ago
Sorta. The issue is the traffic and followings from people who are there because you're pretty aren't the correct audience for what you're selling (assuming what you're selling isn't yourself so to speak). A million views from the wrong audience is less useful than 1000 views from your perfect audience.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

falcolas 3y ago

Pretty aside (while not denigrating its value in videos), the book market has long been dominated (reading, writing, and publishing) by well-off white women. Not always dominated, mind you, but when they took it over, they grabbed ahold of it with both hands.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
By definition - isn't the market going to be dominated by successful participants? Do you mean independently wealthy people? Long ago, this was definitely true - as you only knew how to read & write if you were rich, and you were definitely only buying books if you were rich. Starting shortly after the printing press - yes, poor people weren't dominating the market. But it wasn't dominated by royalty (the vast majority of actual wealthy people of the time). I don't know where you'd consider Alexandre Dumas - but he's kind of the typical successful writer from his generation. His family was somewhat upper-class, but definitely not wealthy for most of his childhood. Charles Dickens was much less wealthy than Dumas. Mark Twain & Thoreau grew up definitely not in the upper class. Same for Nathaniel Hawthorne. Dostoyevsky was not from wealth Mary Shelley was wealthy. Jane Austen & Emily Dickinson were upper class - but not wealthy. But neither were highly successful during their lifetimes. The Bronte sisters were somewhat well off - less so than Austen and Dickinson - but not from a long-line of wealth, and even they weren't very successful in their lifetime! Tolstoy AFAIK was the only super successful independently wealthy writer from the time. Poe, Melville, Henry James, and Victor Hugo were definitely well off, but "wealthy" seems like a stretch. If you look at today - it is definitely not true. JK Rowling is by far the most successful author of the generation, and she was arguably poor before finding success with Harry Potter. Suzanne Collins worked her way up from the bottom and had very middle class life before success with The Hunger Games. Maybe you mean the majority of authors have not-poor spouses? They better! The median author probably makes less than $100 in their career as a writer.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  > By definition - isn't the market going to be dominated by successful participants? They said well-off, and when it comes to book sales being part of the successful masses is a few steps short of making you well-off. > writers Almost all of these are from the 1800s? That doesn't contradict the idea that a group "not always" dominated but has "long" dominated. You only named two authors that are clearly recent enough to be relevant to the argument.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    The early 1900s is a continuation - with men dominating, and the women being mostly upper class but not wealthy. Wharton is rich (the phrase keeping up with the Joneses comes from her family), Woolf and Gertrude Stein are well-off and McCullers & Plath a bit less so. Harper Lee's father was a lawyer, and she's a one-hit wonder. Toni Morrison was not rich... The vast majority of men - who dominate (not the women) - are not from well-off families: Steinbeck, Orwell, Sinclair, Tolkein, Fitzgerald, Lewis Carroll, Tennessee Williams, D.H Lawrence, Jack London (who claimed to be poor but wasn't), Kerouac, Vonnegut. Stephen King and Stan Lee were arguably poor. Hemingway, Salinger, Conrad, Roald Dahl, and Joseph Heller are not from wealth, but definitely not poor. Frank L Baum was wealthy, similar to Melville & Hugo - Woolf, Gertrude Stein, and Jane Austen - but less so than Tolstoy.
Brybry 3y ago
This is only very recently true (and disregarding the "well off" part). Women probably authored over 50% of books starting sometime in the 2010s. [1] And dominate might still be too strong of a word to use, though it's likely true for some genres (ie. ~80% of books and sales in romance). Going by the graphs on page 28 figure 2: Today, women are probably authors of around ~45% to ~60% of new books in the dataset (Goodreads/Bookstat(amazon)/US copyright) and still climbing . [1] https://doi.org/10.3386/w30987 https://doi.org/10.3386/w30987
Mat3777 3y ago
Do you have data on white women dominance?
paulcole 3y ago
When did they take it over?
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  90's? 1996 I think.
  - paulcole 3y ago
    What happened in 1996 that changed the game? Wasn’t that the Primary Colors year?

LightBug1 3y ago

Don't forget an athleisured ass to drive attention and an appropriate coefficient of sales.

bawolff 3y ago

> disproportionate BookTok audience whose sales are driven this way are often written by pretty, white, well-off women. Don't you have to be fairly well off to invest the time to write a book? Its a pretty big time investment with basically no garuntees. I imagine its pretty rare for poor people who work all day to be successful writers. Not to mention a probably strong correlation in higher education in an area that is not all that useful for getting a job,probably further tips the scale to well off people. Basically what i'm wondering, is it really disporportionate relative to the industry at large.

Finnucane 3y ago
>Don't you have to be fairly well off to invest the time to write a book? I can say, after 30 years in the publishing business, that the answer to that is no. Many writers are not that well off. In fact, many struggle financially. Many have 'day jobs' to pay the bills.
- vidarh 3y ago
  It's true that many struggle, and as a result most writers are not full time. But first published novels skew quite old, and as I posted elsewhere the average household income in the UK at least for full time writers is well above average, so while I don't think it's high enough to say you have to be "fairly well off", it certainly helps buy you time. Doesn't necessarily buy you success, though.
  - Finnucane 3y ago
    >But first published novels skew quite old Most of the writers I know started young, and not all writers are novelists. Most are not. >and as I posted elsewhere the average household income in the UK at least for full time writers is well above average That just means they married someone with a real job.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      Most you know might well have started young - many do -, but in terms of getting books published, as per the subject here, the overall numbers are quite clear. > That just means they married someone with a real job. Yes, that was exactly the point - to a large extent writing is subsidized by other jobs, and so there is a significant element of privilege involved.

imperio59 3y ago

I don't get the last point. What does being white or well off have to do with the ability to write books people wanna read? Or is this just casual racism disguised as an attempt to virtue signal?

bowsamic 3y ago
It’s not even virtue signalling, he’s just straight up saying “the crap is produced by white people”
komali2 3y ago
> What does being white or well off have to do with the ability to write books people wanna read? For actual ability, nothing, though the knock-on affects of being white and thus having a higher chance of greater economic standing from birth onwards, higher chance of good education opportunities, greater likelihood of good nutrition, and all the other aspects of existent systemic racism means that ability to have time to write is greater for white people (in the USA). Pointing out the reality of systemic racism is not racism. Institutionalized white supremacy is very real in the USA and is so inherent it can have weird effects like how children prefer to play with white dolls: https://www.history.com/news/brown-v-board-of-education-doll-experiment https://www.history.com/news/brown-v-board-of-education-doll... (it turns out this still happens today). So it follows that white women, for the same reason, might have an advantage on social media accessed by people living in a white supremacist system, or a system that still holds echos of white supremacy.
somethingreen 3y ago
The argument, I think, is that these book sales are in big (-er than historically) part driven not by their quality, but by either physical attraction to the author or admiration for their perceived success.
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Don't think it is virtue signaling, it is just observation on demographics. There are more well off white people, and more well off white women with spare time, and they get 'status' by being published authors, even thought writers don't make much money. Others in the thread have posted some links to statistics. But, this is not to say that there are not exceptions. There are some white women that have written good books, and there are non-white women that publish good books. It was just observation on a general trend. There is a group with free time to pursue 'something' that doesn't make a lot of money because of the status they get from that 'something'. Hence they have a lot of influence in that market.

ChrisRR 3y ago

This seems to happen in many communities. There's a community of people using chinese emulation consoles, and some of them are decent but a lot of them are absolute crap But there's a constant influx of "My <crap console> has broken, what do I do?" It's always the same consoles, always the same faults, but led by some tiktok advert that convinces them to buy the same aliexpress tat without any research of why they shouldn't and what modifications they have to make to make it playable